Karl Barth

The Church and the Churches

A Message from Prof. Barth

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

In 1937 there will be held a World Conference on Faith and Order, in Edinburgh, Scotland. To
this Conference will come delegates from Europe and America, representing the several
diverse points of view widespread in the circles from which they come.

If the Conference were to follow only one of these different views concerning the work which it
must accomplish, its character as a World Conference would be destroyed. The primary
purpose of the gathering is to promote mutual understanding among those who start from
different points of view. How can we accomplish this?

We find the solution when we think of the Conference as called to consider the obstacles which
lie in the way of Christian unity. We see that we must place side by side in our programme of
study whatever obstacles are found to be serious in the experience of Christian churches in
different parts of the world. In some circles differences of doctrine are found to be most
important, in others differences of order, in others lack of co-operation in Christian service, in
others divisions caused by social and cultural traditions.

The programme for 1937 has been drawn up so as to give equal opportunity for the study of
these different types of obstacles. In anticipation of the Conference and its problems, we
present for consideration the viewpoint of Professor Karl Barth, whose brilliant discussion of
the problem of church unity follows.

The Publishers.
 I. The Unity of the Church

"The Church and the Churches" is the subject before us; it is obviously intended to suggest the
question of the unity of the Church in view of the multiplicity of the Churches. That question
may be prompted by a variety of motives, which I need only indicate here.

We recall the fact that in hundreds of mission areas in Asia and Africa the Church is wrestling
with the ancient religions, higher and lower, of the so-called heathen races. But where, who
and what is the Church? What a dissipation of the spiritual and material energies of the
mission work arises, from the fact that there is not one Church but many, and what a
hindrance to the hearing of its message, what a bewilderment to its less attentive hearers,
what a burden to the more serious, is the fact that these churches are in manifold conflict with
each other.

We recall, moreover, that in its home-lands, evangelised for a millennium and more, the
Church is to-day confronted with this and that religion of recent or brand new formation-
religions which surpass the old paganisms in power and light only because they make their
appearance as religion under a disguise; under the disguise of moral, aesthetic, sanitary, social
and political schemes for betterment, beneath which their religious genii remain concealed,
save when their less cautious or their weaker-minded adherents draw the veil aside. The
Church, which on this front ought to be waging a well planned and active campaign, is not in a
position to make it clear, against these adversaries, what it is, what it purposes, or in what
precise way it differs from them. It is split up, as in Germany we have cause enough in recent
years to know, into a multiplicity, into a number of divided and opposing camps; nor is it in
this respect in better case than are the profoundly divided "churches" of modern secularism. In
such a shape as this the Church is wholly unable to make good its claim to possess a loftier
message than theirs.

Further, none of us can fail to see that to-day as always it is the task of the Church to submit
and subordinate itself on its human side, the side of its life, order and teaching, to the
standard which it derives from Christ, from God: its task is to exercise self-criticism, to purify
itself from any element which is foreign to its origin and essence, and which, having such an
essence and origin, it ought not to tolerate: it must look back to its origin and essence, set its
compass by that bearing, suffer itself to be purged and reformed by that standard. But for
such resolve the Church would need a unison of will and direction, without which every effort
in these directions would only mean a continuance and intensification of the conflict between
the several churches; and who can be sure that that conflict would really further the process of
purging the reformation?

But let us lastly go on to consider what the Church is, what it ought to mean, for its own
members, for those who are brought together within it through baptism, through the Word of
God, through the Holy Communion; "the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the
truth" ( I Tim., 3, 15). Can it and will it be, as such, continually imposing, credible, convincing
to its members, if as a Church it has its being only in an array of various Churches, each of
which represents to the others a problem, a critic, a rival, possibly also a disturber and an
enemy? Concerned as we are with the true faith, is not the possibility, or rather the
inevitability, of a comparison of faith with faith a menace to faith itself? What is the Church, if
it can only present itself as repeating the manifoldness and contradictions of the world of
pagan religions? Certainly, in that great process, so clearly discernible in the last two
centuries, by which so many members have found themselves alienated from the Church, this
actual multiplicity of the churches has been one of the strongest factors.

Such, more or less, are the motives which lead us now to set before us the question of church
unity.

Yet it must be made clear at the outset that all these motives are merely secondary when
compared with another authoritative impulse which forces this question upon us, and alone
has the right to compel our attention to it. I refer to that one and only imperative and
obligatory task from which the Church derives its existence, a task which lies upon every man
who, as a responsible being has accepted the cause of the Church as his own. This task
emerges immediately from the fact that the one and only Word of God has once for all been
uttered, for all men to heed, in the fact of the Incarnation: in the man

Christ Jesus, in whom the sin of all men, their contradiction against God and their own inner
self-contradiction is done to death, taken away, forgiven, and exists no more. The task from
which the Church derives its being is to proclaim that this has really happened and to summon
men to believe in its reality. It has therefore no life of its own, but lives as the body of which
the crucified and risen Christ is the Head; that is to say, it lives in and with this commission.
The same thing is true of each individual who is a member of this body. It is this task and
commission which fundamentally impels and compels us to ask after the unity of the Church.

The task as thus committed contemplates no multiplicity of churches. The New Testament
speaks of a variety of communities, of gifts and of persons within the one Church. But this
manifoldness has no independent significance. Its origin, its rights and its limits are to be
found in the unity, or rather in the One, in Jesus Christ as the one Son of God, the bestower of
the one Holy Spirit. Its basis does not lie (even of the good in God's creation the same thing
must be said) in any independent rights and claims of local, national, cultural or personal
individuality. Like the unity of the Church, it has its basis in God's grace, and in no second
principle distinguishable from grace. It is indeed, in itself, nothing else than the living unity of
grace, the one body of Christ in the actuality of its members and organs. In the New
Testament, therefore, we find no relation of polarity or tension, or of mutual dependence,
between the one Church and the many gifts, persons and the like; we find only a one-sided
relation of dependence and derivation in which the many are subordinate to the one. The many
have no need of an independence which indeed they do not possess, and could only achieve by
lapsing away from the unity. From I Corinthians we know how decisively St. Paul set himself to
extirpate the germs of such a development, and in that case he was only dealing with separate
parties; he was not even remotely thinking of separate churches. Thus it is inevitable that any
persons who think they possess, or are the Church, must look away from the array of the
many churches in a quest for the one Church.

But what is meant by the quest for the one Church? It cannot be concerned with the magical
fascination of numerical unity or uniqueness, nor with the ethical and social ideals of
uniformity, mental harmony and agreement. It must rather be concerned with the imperative
content of the acknowledgment that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God above
all, for all and in all ( Eph. 4, 5). Unity in itself will not suffice: nor will any or all of the ideas
and ideals which we may link with that concept. Unity in itself, even Church unity in itself is, as
surely as the independent multiplicities are, merely fallen and unreconciled human nature. The
quest for the unity of the Church must not be a quest for Church-unity in itself; for as such it is
idle and empty. On the road to such a "Church-unity in itself" we shall find that both the
powers of sin and the powers of grace are against us, and against us irresistibly.

The quest for the unity of the Church must in fact be identical with the quest for Jesus Christ
as the concrete Head and Lord of the Church. The blessing of unity cannot be separated from
Him who blesses, for in Him it has its source and reality, through His Word and Spirit it is
revealed to us, and only in faith in Him can it become a reality among us. I repeat: Jesus
Christ as the one Mediator between God and man is the oneness of the Church, is that unity
within which there may be a multiplicity of communities, of gifts, of persons within one Church,
while through it a multiplicity of churches are excluded. When we confess and assert that it
belongs to the Church's commission to be one Church, we must not have in mind the idea of
unity, whatever its goodness and moral beauty may be-we must have Him in our mind; for in
Him and in Him only do those multiplicities within the Church possess their life, their scope,
their dignity, rightfulness and promise, when they seek and possess these things in that
relation of dependence, derivation, subordination of which I have spoken; just as man's
nature, taken up by Him, united with Him and reconciled, can only find its salvation in a similar
dependentness of being, scope and significance. And in Him, in Him only, can those other
multiplicities of the Church whether recent or of long standing, which claim an independence of
their own, lose their life. "Homesickness for the una sancta" is genuine and legitimate only in
so far as it is a disquietude at the fact that we have lost and forgotten Christ, and with Him
have lost the unity of the Church.

Thus we must be on our guard, all along the line, lest the motives which stir us to-day lead us
to a quest which looks past Him. Indeed, however rightful and urgent those motives are, we
could well leave them out of our reckoning. We shall do well to realise that in themselves they
are well-meaning but merely human desires, and that we can have no final certainty that they
are rightful, no unanswerable claim for their fulfilment. Unless we regard them with a measure
of holy indifference we are ill-placed for a quest after the unity of the Church. But we cannot
leave out of our reckoning the claim urged by Jesus Christ upon us. If we listen to the voice of
the Good Shepherd, then the question of the unity of the Church will most surely become for
us a burning question. Then, it may be, His voice will endorse those motives of which we have
spoken, with weight, necessity and imperative force; it will then be right and requisite that
they should kindle us to a flame, and any indifference to them will be far from holy. From that
Voice which alone can question us in tones which make "our hearts burn within us" must we
expect and await the ultimate answer.
 II. The Multiplicity of the Churches

We have no right to explain the multiplicity of the churches as a necessary mark of the visible
and empirical as contrasted with the ideal, invisible and essential Church; no right, because
this entire distinction is foreign to the New Testament, and because, according to the New
Testament, even in this respect the Church of Jesus Christ is but one; invisible in respect of
the grace of the Word of God and of the Holy Spirit, whereby the Church and its members as
such are grounded, up-borne, guided and preserved, but visible by tokens in the multitude of
its confessed adherents, visible as a congregation with its office-bearers, visible as a ministry
of Word and Sacrament. It is indeed an act of faith that where these things are found, there
the Church is; but on the other hand it is only in virtue of the tokens which thus manifest it as
existent and active that we can make that act of faith. There is no way of escape from the
visible to the invisible Church. Our questioning, therefore, as to the unity of the Church cannot
be silenced by pointing away to the invisible or essential Church. If there is a problem here
which asks for solution-and indeed there is- it is one which concerns the invisible as directly as
it concerns the visible Church; if we hearken to Christ, we shall be sure of that, and only if we
prefer to platonize shall we deny it.

But, further, we have no right to explain the multiplicity of the churches as an unfolding of the
wealth of that grace which is given to mankind in Jesus Christ, divinely purposed and therefore
normal. How can we know that the case stands thus? What is our standing ground if we take
the familiar line of ascribing to the Roman, the Greek, the Lutheran, the Reformed, the
Anglican and other churches their special attributes and functions within an imagined organic
totality? However well this may sound, it is not theology, it is mere sociology or philosophy of
history; it means that in order to evade the question of church unity we are spinning the
thread of our own notions instead of facing the question with which Christ confronts us, and
listening for His own answer. But if we did face it, we should be quite sure that it is utterly and
for ever impossible to take the Virgin of Einsiedeln and Luther's Wittenberg or Calvin's Geneva,
the Roman Mass and the Evangelical Communion, the Orthodox in conostasis and the
evangelical pulpit, the polytheism of the "Deutsche Christen" (including those who in fact
though not in name belong to them) and the evangelical interpretation of the first
Commandment, as branches of the one and the self-same tree, comparing and estimating
them as belonging to one category. At these points as at others the multiplicity of the churches
is manifest, and-if we listen to Christ-it demands from us a definite decision and choice, this
way or that. If we listen to Christ, we cannot believe in one of the alternatives and hold the
other also to be Christian; our life is lived within the differences which divide the churches, and
not in a region which transcends them. Such a region has for its inhabitants only those who, in
contemplation of God and their own selves, come at the last to prefer their own voices to any
other.

In fact, we have no right to explain the multiplicity of the churches at all. We have to deal with
it as we deal with sin, our own and others, to recognise it as a fact, to understand it as the
impossible thing which has intruded itself, as guilt which we must take upon ourselves, without
the power to liberate ourselves from it. We must not allow ourselves to acquiesce in its reality;
rather we must pray that it be forgiven and removed, and be ready to do whatever God's will
and command may enjoin in respect of it. A great part, the decisive part perhaps, of all that
men can do for the unity of the Church would be already done, if on all sides we were able and
willing to handle the multiplicity of the churches in this way: no longer as a speculative
problem or a matter of the philosophy of history, but, to put it in the simplest terms, with a
sober mind, as men profoundly shocked but yet believing, and therefore hopeful, and, by
reason of hope, ready to obey.

Or is there perhaps some other possible way than that of dealing with the multiplicity of the
churches as we deal with sin, our own and others'? If Christ is indeed, as we saw, the unity of
the Church, then the only multiplicity which can be normal is that within the Church, namely
that of the local communities, of the gifts of the Spirit, of the believers of each sex, language
and race, and there can be no multiplicity of churches. It is then unthinkable that to those
multiplicities which are rooted in unity we should have to add that which tears it in pieces;
unthinkable that great entire groups of communities should stand over against each other in
such a way that their doctrines and confessions of faith are mutually contradictory; that what
is called revelation in one place should be called error elsewhere, that what is here revered as
dogma should there be regarded as heresy; that the ordinances of one group should be
stigmatised by another as alien, unacceptable, or even intolerable: that the adherents of the
one should be at one with those of another in every conceivable point except that they are
unable to pray together, to preach and hear God's word together, and to join together in Holy
Communion.

It is unthinkable that whichever way one looks and listens, one should hear people saying, in
quiet or vehement tones, with kindly under-statement or undisguised sternness, "You have a
different spirit from ours." Yet that is just what actually results from the multiplicity of the
churches; to wash our hands of it, or to prescribe doses of love, patience and tolerance as a
cure, is futile. Such prescriptions may serve our turn almost anywhere else, but it is hopeless
to mediate between the churches by such methods - unless the churches are dead already. If
they are alive, and if we are listening for Christ's voice, then it is not a matter of opinion but of
faith that over against the doctrine, order and life of other churches we should utter a more or
less emphatic No at certain decision points, that we should draw the line and thus be
compelled to endorse the multiplicity of the churches. As I said before, the truth of God in
Jesus Christ compels us again and again to decision and choice; thus men's minds go diverse
ways, not perversely (if all is clean and above board), not without pain, yet unaffectedly,
unmoved by the possible reproach of narrow-mindedness and want of heart, lending no ear to
those who cry "peace, peace" when there is no peace. Men's minds, at such points, must
needs go different ways: the churches must needs separate or abide by an existing separation.
This is our trouble, this "needs must" which comes from Christ, and makes hard fact of a state
of things which, if Christ is our starting-point, our minds admit to be unthinkable.

I know that we must bear it in mind that the Church is the existential form of the Kingdom of
Christ in the interim between the Ascension and His second coming, that is, in an epoch in
which He is no longer present with us in that mode wherein He was present

to His disciples and apostles in the great forty days, nor is He yet so present as He will be in
the manifested, and so far perfected glory of His Kingdom. But it is just the incompleteness,
the burden and trouble of this epoch which is manifested in the multiplicity of the Churches, as
it is also manifest in the original and actual sin even of believers, even of the members of
Christ's body. All the more must we treat this incompleteness seriously, all the more must we
think of it and deal with it as linked together with sin, because our vision looks past it in hope,
though in a hope as yet unfulfilled.

I know too that we should also bear it in mind, that over against the terrible multiplicity of the
churches, signs of oneness are not wholly absent. Let us always be ready to admit with
gratitude that there are points of agreement between all churches, agreements often between
churches which are most distant from each other and in serious conflict; they shine out, at
moments, in the gloom, with surpassing clearness. However dreadfully the separations which
lie behind them may re-assert themselves, these visions should not be forgotten or
underestimated; we need only remember that these agreements-they are signs

and nothing more-can neither remove our trouble, our inevitable separateness in faith, hope
and love, nor make manifest the unity of the Church.

Let us lastly bear in mind a truth which even in the strongest stress of ecclesiastical
controversy has hardly ever been ignored or denied, that there are real Christians, God's elect,
in all the churches, who, dispersed though they may be, do yet give a visible expression to the
unity of the Church. But, admitting this, what are we to say of the rest and what of the
churches as such? Are we, like the hyper-puritans of all ages, to think of the rest as lost? And
if we refuse to call them lost, what are we to make of the fact that those real Christians, as
such, plainly count for nothing in face of the separateness of the churches?
Faced by this trouble, it will be well for us to stand and confront it as an enigma which no
theory will help us to solve. If we could deduce the multiplicity of the churches as logically
emerging from the unity; if we could find the truth of the ecclesia sancta catholica, the
communio sanctorum unfolding its implications in a Sic and a Non, and in a synthesis
transcending them both, in such a way that the parallel and contradictory phenomena of Rome
and Byzantium, Wittenberg and Geneva, episcopacy and presbyterianism, Reformation
Protestantism and Protestant modernism, with many more antitheses, could be regarded as
the fruits of a logical necessity, past and present, then there would be no real trouble to
confront us. But there is. There is a trouble which we have to face in action, in action only; and
the first and last thing in our response as we face it must be prayer for forgiveness and
sanctification offered up to the Lord of the Church. The multiplicity of the churches is simply
our helplessness in His sight. We cannot listen for His voice, without an act of decision, choice,
confession: yet we cannot decide and confess our faith without falling into separation and so
coming into contradiction against Him. Who are we, and what is His Church, if that is our
standing towards Him? We had best attempt to give no other answer than this, that we are
those, that the Church is the congregation of those, who know that they are helpless, but that
they are helpless in the presence of One who as their Saviour and their Lord is greater than
they.
 III. The Union of the Churches

If Jesus Christ is the unity of the Church, and if the multiplicity of the churches is our trouble,
then there can be no evading the fact that the union of the churches into a Church is a task
imposed by the Lord of the Church and therefore a mandate. It is not implied that we can and
shall fulfil this command: nor, certainly, is it implied that all or any of the things which have
been and are being attempted towards church union are even partially or approximately such a
fulfilment. Rather must we constantly remember that the fulfilment of the command is wholly
and entirely the work of Him who lays it on us, that in Him the Church is once for all, and in
spite of every multiplicity of the churches, made one, and does not await any desires,
capacities or labours of ours for its unification. And yet our faith in Jesus Christ brings with it
this implication, that the command is indubitably laid upon us, and that we have a share, not
by virtue of any Christian activity of ours, but in faith in Jesus Christ, in its fulfilment. We
cannot accept the assurance of our justification, on the ground of the righteousness which is
perfected in Jesus Christ alone, without hearing His command, and learning that even as we
accept it we are claimed through Him, claimed therefore for the unity of the Church; since we
belong no longer to ourselves but to Him, our action, remote though it may be, in itself, from
His, is directed inevitably towards the uniting of the Church.

But what is the union of the Churches? Was it a deliberate acceptance and initiation of the
task, when from the 18th century onwards, the churches began to adopt the idea of mutual
civility and tolerance? There is no need to ignore the advantageous results of that
development; yet the serious criticism to which this mode of union is open cannot be ignored.
The concept of toleration originates in political and philosophical principles which are not only
alien but even opposed to the Gospel. Their triumph within the various churches was a
symptom of inward weakness and not of strength. Among its results is one which ought not to
be overlooked, namely that the churches have in increasing measure lost their character and
their significance in the life of the peoples; and just in proportion as the churches awoke to
fresh self-consciousness as holders of a confession, so did it become manifest that tolerance,
so far from removing the old separations, had not affected them in the least.

Much the same thing has to be said of those federations or alliances of which every country
has for some time afforded examples, alliances between separated churches as such or
between religious societies here and there which foster similar activities, e.g., those of home
or foreign missions. Is the focus in which men have thus made contact or even achieved
coalitions with each other, the essential point? Clearly it is not; for otherwise they would have
gone on to establish quite other coalitions and contacts. But if it is not the essential, if, as may
well be, it is only something which the Church has in common with human societies and
undertakings in general, if it is only the better sort of humanitarian motive and effort that
leads to such contacts and agreements, then what can they really effect toward the uniting of
the Church? A mere federation, in itself, has nothing at all to do with real church union. We
may find a clear indication of this in the fact that even so strong and energetic a coalition as
that which in recent years has brought German Lutherans and Reformed together in the
Confessional Synods has not yet resulted in united Communion services, but rather (so far, at
least, as the Lutherans are concerned) in a fresh, if not entirely sincere, awaking of
denominational self-consciousness.

Must we speak in similar terms of what is called the oecumenical movement? The more
cautious and modest its aims, the less it indulges in shouting "hallelujah"-as has been all too
prematurely done, alike in the age of tolerance and in that of federation- the more chance
there will be of avoiding this danger. That those who differ in belief should come to know each
other in the matters which are essential to each, should give a fair hearing to what is essential
in other churches, should confer with persons consciously and definitely representing such
churches, in quest for that unity which each of them so variously and with such differing claims
intends to represent; all this even when attempted only on the scale of personal intercourse,
was to the good, and it would be well that so promising a method should be utilised on a larger
scale. But this would lead to one of two results; we should either be left with a few statements
of religious and denominational import, precise, interesting and yet irresponsible, or we should
find that the various churches, having learned to understand each other more thoroughly,
were more conscious than ever of their own differentiae and their inevitable separateness. The
union of the churches is too great a matter to be the result of a movement, however cautious
and far-sighted. Formal resolutions and declarations made by the various organs of the
oecumenical movement could only serve as the anticipation of such a result; and as such they
cannot possess that validity which alone could entitle them to be received and taken by the
various churches, not merely as courageous expressions of humanitarianisms such as a
Commission of the League of Nations might put out, but as coming from the authoritative
voice of the one Church.

From this point of view I am not distressed by the well-known and widely regretted attitude of
the Roman See towards union movements of the past and present. It was and is needful that
someone somewhere should make a stand against the excessive claims of all church
movements, and assert that the union of the churches is a thing which cannot be
manufactured, but must be found and confessed, in subordination to that already
accomplished oneness of the Church which is in Jesus Christ. It is in this sense that I
understand the papal refusal to take a hand in the efforts which have been hitherto made
towards union. And in this sense I would say that in those circles which are rightly pre-
occupied with the thought of union it is impossible to be too cautious about "open" Communion
Services and the like. Much that is beautiful in itself is a very long way from being true, far
therefore from being enjoined upon us or even permissible.

Let us not deceive ourselves. The union of the churches into the oneness of the Church would
mean more than mutual tolerance, respect and co-operation; more than readiness to hear and
to understand each other: more than an emotional sense of oneness in the possession of some
ineffable common link; more than that we, being one in faith, hope and charity, could worship
together in one accord. Above all it would mean, as the decisive test of unity, that we should
join in making confession of our faith and thus should unitedly proclaim it to the world, and so
fulfil that commandment of Jesus on which the Church is based. The message and witness,
given by the Church's teaching, order and life, must utter one voice, however manifold in the
diversity of languages, gifts, of place and persons. A union of the churches in the sense of that
task which is so seriously laid upon the Church would mean a union of the confessions into one
unanimous Confession. If we remain on the level where confessions are divided, we remain
where the multiplicity of the churches is inevitable.

Let us clear our minds. What are the essential conditions in which it would be possible to share
in such a genuine effort of union towards a living Church, call it what you will?

(1) Suppose a church to be taking the step of relinquishing its own particular confession for
one which it will share in union with others. Such a step ought in no circumstances to be an act
of confessional weakness, an assertion of indifference to its faith and apprehension. Rather,
the Church should feel itself called, instructed and summoned, in its special place and
responsibility, to act with seriousness in the power of an enhanced, not of a diminished faith.
So and not otherwise should it be led past its own particularity towards oneness.

(2) No secular motive, such as the desire for national or international union, should be allowed
to prompt a church to surrender its individuality. Modestly though the claim should be made, a
genuine church separation will always possess a preponderant rightness over against any
nonchurchly motives for union, and only through its faith can and must a living church know
itself to be called to abandon its separateness.

(3) Such a surrender must not imply the abandonment, in one iota, of anything which a church
believes it necessary to assert in a certain way and not otherwise. The step away from a
particular to a common confession must have no taint of compromise, or of an assent to forms
and formulae of union which would camouflage division without transcending it. A church
taking such a step must be known to act with perfect truthfulness and loyalty.
(4) In the surrender of separation only one thing must be abandoned, namely a failure in
obedience to Christ, hitherto unrealised, in which a church, in common, it may be, with a
neighbour church, or with all the severed churches, has had a share of guilt in that trouble
which is the multiplicity of the churches. Its share has possibly lain in the fact that the normal
and necessary multiplicity of communities, gifts and persons within the Church has by the
agency of the evil one been perverted; possibly in this, that undue place and import has been
attributed to what is racial, to elements of human mentality and ethic, or of historical
persistence. This would be the disobedience which the church would have to consider, as it
listened afresh to the voice of Christ.

It is beyond controversy that only through the satisfaction of these conditions could a living
church be led to unite with other churches. But the conditions are plainly such as to make the
union of the churches a task which is lofty and arduous beyond measure: a task of super-
human magnitude, we may say, as we reflect on the facts of multiplicity, or as each of us
thinks of his own church, a living church as one may hope, and therefore one which would
approach these conditions without laxity. What voice or summons will be mighty enough to
utter God's word in such tones to a church like the Roman, the Lutheran, or the Reformed, to
these three together and all the others with them, that in conformity with these conditions
they could respond with one confession and so return to the unity of the Church? Yet if such a
voice is not uttered and heard, they neither can nor may rightly unite. A union which
presupposed less than this would be no act of obedience but a juggling with the facts.

If these things are so, then we do not evade the question concerning the task of church union,
we answer it in the only possible way, if we revert to the principle that in Christ alone this task
is fulfilled, that His voice and summons alone can bring that union into being. All that we do in
this matter will be good or evil in proportion as it makes it possible for us and for others to
listen to that summons and that voice.
 IV. The Church in the Churches

The task of church union is essentially one with that concrete practical task which all church
activity must presuppose, the task of listening to Christ: they move or halt together. But it
follows from this that the question of the quest for the church must be definitely raised and
find an answer within the churches, in their present multiplicity and separation. We cannot
hear Christ otherwise than according to the particular leading and responsibility of the
churches, each of us, that is, giving ear to the church to which we owe allegiance as members,
within which we were baptised and brought to belief. Whether we like it or not, whether we
share or not in a common disobedience and sin, whether our yearning for the una sancta is
deep or shallow, we are all in separation; our churchly existence, so far as we have one at all,
is a separated one; only in our own church can we listen to Christ, not in any other, and still
less on any neutral ground above or outside the severed churches. This holds good, I believe -
in so far as the distinction is permissible-for the personal and individual faith and life of each of
us one by one; certainly it holds good for that "hearing of Christ" which we are now discussing,
namely for a "hearing" which is the presupposition of all church activity and therefore of work
for the union of the churches. If a man says that he can hear Christ's voice as well in this or
that church as in his own, he had better ask himself whether he has not come to substitute for
the obedient mind and will which listens to Christ (in his own and other churches) one or other
of the many available historical or aesthetic interests. As for a neutral ground outside or above
the churches, in such a sphere committees and conferences may be held, or Christian men and
women, yet more irresponsible and unauthoritative, may follow their own ideas and schemes.
But such inter- and supra-denominational movements as thus come into being are either
ineffective because they do not seriously tackle the problems of the Church, of doctrine, or
order and life, or they have an effect because they do take them seriously, and lo and behold,
they are engaged in forming a church; a new church or church-like society comes into being,
and neutrality is abandoned, and the old question regarding unity is met with another which
concerns the movement which is trying to give unity a visible shape. Church work, and union
work as a part of it, must be done within the churches, in its proper Christian home, or it will
not be done at all. If we would listen to Christ, as to Him who Himself is the Church's unity and
in whom its union is already accomplished, then from the outset we must with humble but
complete sincerity, endorse the confession of our own church. Admittedly, what we thus
endorse is a painful thing; it lacks finality, and the hope of transcending it will rightly be
present to our minds; it involves the confession of our own and our fathers' sin-shall we say a
hidden sin, or one which has long parted with concealment? And yet only thus can we endorse
the call of Christ, for it is only thus that (however human errors and perplexities may obscure
it) the call reaches us. So long as it is true that Christ calls us so, we can only confess Him by
endorsing the confession of our own church. But if He has called us otherwise, then there is
another church, whose confession we ought to endorse instead of our own. We shall do very
poor service to the cause of union if we think meanly of the sphere and church assigned to us,
and attempt to stage the unity of the Church or play the part of the Christ ourselves.

Coming now to the problem of life then, the question which each church should put to itself is
this:-Do we, as a Church, in our relation and attitude to the realities and problems of the
church's environment in the world, really listen to Christ in the terms of our own tradition and
confession?

Do we allow Christ (not, of course, any artificial Christ, but the Christ of those scriptures which
our own and all other churches accept) to determine our relation to the state-a part of our
environment which is present to all our minds just now - as our confession requires and our
standards have declared? Or, in this connection as in others, do we allow ourselves to follow a
line of tactics or strategy in which we do in fact listen for other voices, respectable perhaps,
but alien from Christ? It comes to this: If two or three churches, be they never so different and
divided, were to put just this question penitently to themselves, then ipso facto in those
churches the Church would be a present reality and visible. In Germany, Lutheran and
Reformed came wonderfully close to each other in recent years, just in proportion as they
(starting from the Lutheran and Reformed confessions respectively) found themselves faced
with the practical decision which Christ laid upon them. Perhaps other churches only require a
little more of that alertness which tribulation calls forth, that awareness of the straight dealing
which a church when challenged must exhibit, in order to experience something of the Church
and its oneness, without any union or in anticipation of any efforts in that direction.

Again, in respect of order, every church should ask itself, quite simply, this question: - Are we
really listening to Christ, as we in the spirit of our church and in accord with its direction deal
thus with the congregations, their ministries and their worship? Are we serious in saying that
our papal, episcopal, presbyterian system, or (if we are Quakers) our lack of system is the true
representation of the Lordship of Christ in His Church? Do we respect His Lordship as we say
that we do, when we think it vital to make the sacrament or the liturgy or the sermon the
focus of our worship? Or, when we follow our conscience or the best of our knowledge and
adopt this or that line as the right Order, is it rather a naive and secular turn of mind that
influences us, whether it be monarchical, democratic, or individualist? Is it Christ who
dominates us, or just some magical, aesthetic, or rationalistic bent? I assert that if only each
church will take itself seriously "itself, and Christ within it," then even if there be no talk of
union movements in it, even if there be no change at all in its order and its way of worship,
the one Church would be in that single church a present reality and visible. So long as it
passes no judgment on itself and is zealous for its own ordinances as such, it can only
represent the multiplicity of the churches. But within the multiplicity it can represent the unity
of the Church, if in its ordinances it is zealous for Christ.

Each several church should ask itself the same question with regard to the central problem of
doctrine. It may sound like perilous relativism, yet of this problem also I will say the same
thing - let the Roman church work out its doctrine of nature and grace, with the Tridentine
teaching on justification, to their logical conclusions: let the Lutheran and Calvinistic bodies do
the same with their specific eucharistic doctrine, and neo-Protestantism with its doctrine of
man's natural goodness; but let them do this not merely in a syllogistic spirit, nor as working
with logical fervour on the basis of presuppositions which stop short of being ultimate, but as
listening to Christ, to Christ of the scriptures. The confessions will then come into the open,
over against each other, in sharp and surprising contrast; and that is precisely what makes
many people regard them, and regard serious theology, with disquietude and reluctance, in
the interest of peace. Yet, strange as it may seem, it is still true, that those who fail to
understand other churches than their own are not the people who care intensely about
theology, but the theological dilettantes, eclectics and historians of all sorts; while those very
men who have found themselves forced to confront a clear thorough-going logical sic et non
find themselves allied to each other in spite of all contradictions, by an underlying fellowship
and understanding, even in the cause which they handle so differently and approach from such
painfully different angles. But that cause, it may be, is nothing else than Jesus Christ and the
unity of the church. For my part I am convinced that true unity was more of a present and
visible reality in the Marburg discussions of 1529-which it is fashionable to decry-or in the
polemics of later Lutheran and Reformed orthodoxy-for which no one has a good word-than in
certain doings of our own day, in which there was so much profession of charity that no one
had courage enough left to enquire with serious honesty about the truth, or to allow thesis and
antithesis well thought out to meet each other face to face. But to enquire into the truth of
Christ is always hopeful, always a work of charity; it is always and in all circumstances a
service to the union of the churches, even when its first result is that no one moves an inch
from his thesis, and so the fact of division is at first accentuated.

The third postulate is this-and if it is scripturally true that the Church's decisive and ultimate
function is that of teaching and preaching, I may call it the fundamental postulate and
presupposition of Church union; it is vital that once more in every church, in its own special
atmosphere and thus with an ear attentive to Christ, real sober strict genuine theology should
become active. Theological work, concrete and unpretentious, may well be the business which
men can most readily set about within the churches for the sake of the Church. Here I make
an abrupt end; thus leaving it clear that even in this sphere the really decisive work cannot be
an achievement of human power.